Well, the bad and good news is that it’s pretty much exactly that - we lack the protocol for dealing with good stuff. That’s bad news because it took us at least 25-26 years to “train” ourselves to the world, a large chunk of which was crisis response mode, and it’s much easier to pick up a new habit (or thought pattern) when younger and more malleable. The good news is, it can still be done, although it takes more work…
Oh, we have those in common, then!:)) I also have a hefty dose of physical abuse in the form of slaps from a big army guy, leather belts, and hefty wooden shovel handles. And I must say, the psychological and emotional parts are way more impactful in the day-to-day… The physical bit at least showed me that I can take one helluva beating, so that’s the shittiest way to gain some confidence, although, same, don’t do well with random touching. My whole body flinches away reflexively when I accidentally touch anything, from people to objects. Plus that confidence is but a drop in a busted bucket, because the emotional stuff left me with a 7-year depression after I nearly married my grandmother…
As for your crisis responses, yeah, I’d say the main problem is that you forget that you gotta protect yourself as well. The delayed action may, honestly, stem from the fact that your mind is just that good at gauging the variables, evaluating the danger, that it also knows instinctively just how much time it has to act before shit gets really real, y’know? Found this out during my brief stint in management, estimations and identifying potential risks and their impact on the timeline were on point way more frequently than they weren’t. At worst, I undersold and overdelivered.
And now to what helped me. I have no idea if any of these will do anything for you - I very much hope they will and am preemptively sorry if not:
The main thing which helped me reprogram myself was looking for the hidden benefit in every single element - what skills have I developed to be an ace undercover fireman. Writing these out really did help, as did writing it as a sort of character study on a clone of myself. This last part especially, because it was impossible for me to give myself credit for anything when starting out, as everything was “bare minimum” at best from the standards imposed by my family. I also think it’d work regardless of who embodies your traits, all that matters is to keep (as) objectively (as possible) true to who you know yourself to be, then evaluate who you see as you would any other human being around you.
That imposed standards bit. It was VERY important for me to see exactly what was expected of me - again, list form helped immensely, because that represented most of my standards. And the shitty part is, they’re actually not Mine, they were crammed into my head without my consent and I was gaslit into believing they’re the only valid ones.
After I’d set everything on a list, I gave it a Voice in my head. I made one up, so that it sounded best-fitting for all of that oftentimes vile and mostly unreasonable shit. After that, every time a critique would come, I’d take the brief time to see if it was on the list, and if yes, I slapped the voice onto it. Did this for a while, and then they started coming out directly in that voice, so I kinda’ know to avoid them without needing to look too closely. Dimmed a lot of the psychological impact and cleared up some self-confidence - enough to trust myself with Life In General, not enough to trust myself around people. Living with that Voice for a while also helped me understand just how artificial they all were.
I then did the Voice thing for a couple more elements which I knew were taken from my folks, such as my grandfather’s quickness to anger and his urge to respond excessively (this is honestly just an angry version of myself, because it turned out to be useful when adequately directed), my tendency to underevaluate myself (that one’s whiny as fuck, because of course), my innate thirst for justice (this one isn’t really a Voice, as much as it is a… hmm, a nuance of feelings, I think), because it could very easily get polluted by the anger and just turn into Blind Vengeance, and because it developed as a result of the fact that I started understanding pretty early on that what was being done to me was immensely shitty, but I couldn’t do anything about it, so there’s over-boiled frustration in there. Again, this helped me while digging for my Core, because I thought it would be easier to attach new programming closer to the stem:))
and finally (although still a huge bit of it all), I started doing sanity checks on myself. Every time something new came up and it wouldn’t fit any of the Voices, I’d start slowly opening up and asking people. Specifically just about that, how did they see the cause of my conundrum and how they’d react to it. Asked as many people as I could, also posted a lot of it on the old reddit mental health boards. And I’d just wait to get a relevant enough sample, average out the sanest-seeming response, then compared it to mine. Very important, every single time, I asked myself specifically what I WANTED to do. Checking my own opinion and making a conscious choice made me feel like I “owned” myself, and really helped with starting to prioritise myself a bit more (when justified, within reason, and that last one’s a lie, because I still give slightly too much, although I’ve limited it to people I love, in whichever way).
Other than that, and to bring this to a close, because fukken Jesus!, did a lot of therapy with people who would let me drone on, rummaging through my own head, and helped me do the exact thing I did with other people, although it was frequently faster due to their professional training. Practicing a sort of exposure therapy to saying “no” when I felt it was a no, forcefully taking care of my biology (“I’m not gonna eat just yet, I’ll finish this Spreadsheet and then I’ll get something” - he said, 8 hours ago), opening up more to and to more people (most won’t get it, but with luck, they’ll at least be interested in hearing it, so free sounding board/Squash wall!), and Letting Life Happen™, Going With It™, and other such very contemporary and youthful sayings. It’s brushing teeth, wiping ass, telling myself I’m not a worthless piece of shit, daily care routine.
Again, sorry for droning on, wanted to offer all I have on this. Genuinely hope with all my heart at least some of it will be marginally helpful… And stay strong!🤗 You’ve made an internet friend today, and I would happily bounce around ideas if you’ll decide to do the sanity check thing!:D
P.S.: oh, and that instinct to protect others from what you know is shitty is 100% noble! Like, objectively! Don’t forget that!
Well, the bad and good news is that it’s pretty much exactly that - we lack the protocol for dealing with good stuff. That’s bad news because it took us at least 25-26 years to “train” ourselves to the world, a large chunk of which was crisis response mode, and it’s much easier to pick up a new habit (or thought pattern) when younger and more malleable. The good news is, it can still be done, although it takes more work…
Oh, we have those in common, then!:)) I also have a hefty dose of physical abuse in the form of slaps from a big army guy, leather belts, and hefty wooden shovel handles. And I must say, the psychological and emotional parts are way more impactful in the day-to-day… The physical bit at least showed me that I can take one helluva beating, so that’s the shittiest way to gain some confidence, although, same, don’t do well with random touching. My whole body flinches away reflexively when I accidentally touch anything, from people to objects. Plus that confidence is but a drop in a busted bucket, because the emotional stuff left me with a 7-year depression after I nearly married my grandmother…
As for your crisis responses, yeah, I’d say the main problem is that you forget that you gotta protect yourself as well. The delayed action may, honestly, stem from the fact that your mind is just that good at gauging the variables, evaluating the danger, that it also knows instinctively just how much time it has to act before shit gets really real, y’know? Found this out during my brief stint in management, estimations and identifying potential risks and their impact on the timeline were on point way more frequently than they weren’t. At worst, I undersold and overdelivered.
And now to what helped me. I have no idea if any of these will do anything for you - I very much hope they will and am preemptively sorry if not:
The main thing which helped me reprogram myself was looking for the hidden benefit in every single element - what skills have I developed to be an ace undercover fireman. Writing these out really did help, as did writing it as a sort of character study on a clone of myself. This last part especially, because it was impossible for me to give myself credit for anything when starting out, as everything was “bare minimum” at best from the standards imposed by my family. I also think it’d work regardless of who embodies your traits, all that matters is to keep (as) objectively (as possible) true to who you know yourself to be, then evaluate who you see as you would any other human being around you.
That imposed standards bit. It was VERY important for me to see exactly what was expected of me - again, list form helped immensely, because that represented most of my standards. And the shitty part is, they’re actually not Mine, they were crammed into my head without my consent and I was gaslit into believing they’re the only valid ones.
After I’d set everything on a list, I gave it a Voice in my head. I made one up, so that it sounded best-fitting for all of that oftentimes vile and mostly unreasonable shit. After that, every time a critique would come, I’d take the brief time to see if it was on the list, and if yes, I slapped the voice onto it. Did this for a while, and then they started coming out directly in that voice, so I kinda’ know to avoid them without needing to look too closely. Dimmed a lot of the psychological impact and cleared up some self-confidence - enough to trust myself with Life In General, not enough to trust myself around people. Living with that Voice for a while also helped me understand just how artificial they all were.
I then did the Voice thing for a couple more elements which I knew were taken from my folks, such as my grandfather’s quickness to anger and his urge to respond excessively (this is honestly just an angry version of myself, because it turned out to be useful when adequately directed), my tendency to underevaluate myself (that one’s whiny as fuck, because of course), my innate thirst for justice (this one isn’t really a Voice, as much as it is a… hmm, a nuance of feelings, I think), because it could very easily get polluted by the anger and just turn into Blind Vengeance, and because it developed as a result of the fact that I started understanding pretty early on that what was being done to me was immensely shitty, but I couldn’t do anything about it, so there’s over-boiled frustration in there. Again, this helped me while digging for my Core, because I thought it would be easier to attach new programming closer to the stem:))
and finally (although still a huge bit of it all), I started doing sanity checks on myself. Every time something new came up and it wouldn’t fit any of the Voices, I’d start slowly opening up and asking people. Specifically just about that, how did they see the cause of my conundrum and how they’d react to it. Asked as many people as I could, also posted a lot of it on the old reddit mental health boards. And I’d just wait to get a relevant enough sample, average out the sanest-seeming response, then compared it to mine. Very important, every single time, I asked myself specifically what I WANTED to do. Checking my own opinion and making a conscious choice made me feel like I “owned” myself, and really helped with starting to prioritise myself a bit more (when justified, within reason, and that last one’s a lie, because I still give slightly too much, although I’ve limited it to people I love, in whichever way).
Other than that, and to bring this to a close, because fukken Jesus!, did a lot of therapy with people who would let me drone on, rummaging through my own head, and helped me do the exact thing I did with other people, although it was frequently faster due to their professional training. Practicing a sort of exposure therapy to saying “no” when I felt it was a no, forcefully taking care of my biology (“I’m not gonna eat just yet, I’ll finish this Spreadsheet and then I’ll get something” - he said, 8 hours ago), opening up more to and to more people (most won’t get it, but with luck, they’ll at least be interested in hearing it, so free sounding board/Squash wall!), and Letting Life Happen™, Going With It™, and other such very contemporary and youthful sayings. It’s brushing teeth, wiping ass, telling myself I’m not a worthless piece of shit, daily care routine.
Again, sorry for droning on, wanted to offer all I have on this. Genuinely hope with all my heart at least some of it will be marginally helpful… And stay strong!🤗 You’ve made an internet friend today, and I would happily bounce around ideas if you’ll decide to do the sanity check thing!:D
P.S.: oh, and that instinct to protect others from what you know is shitty is 100% noble! Like, objectively! Don’t forget that!